Category Archives: Life on Earth

Today’s “daily d’awww” is coming from China: A baby monkey playing with a lion cub at Guaipo Manchurian Tiger Park in Shenyang. There are also two cute tiger cubs playing with each other in the background.

An amazing video of titled Gigantic School of Rays from National Geographic. A record-breaking school of mobula rays has arrived off the coast of Baja California. Some of them are even flying over the sea surface!

In the small islands of New Zealand, the world’s heaviest insect lives – The Giant weta. There are 70 types of species of weta in the genus Deinacrida of the family Anostostomatidae. Giant weta is endemic to New Zealand and is an example of island gigantism: which is a biological phenomenon leading to a larger size than their mainland relatives because of their isolation and lack of large predators. A female giant weta filled with eggs can reach up to 70 grams or more!

The farthest spacecraft from Earth, NASA’s Voyager 1 Notes 1 probe took a photo of planet Earth in 1990, from a record distance of about 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles, 40 AU) from Earth. The photo is known as the Pale Blue Dot. In the photograph, Earth is shown as a fraction of a pixel (0.12 pixel in size) against the vastness of space. It was a part of the solar system Family Portrait series of images.

The Voyager 1 spacecraft, which had completed its primary mission and was leaving the Solar System, was commanded by NASA to turn its camera around and to take a photograph of Earth across a great expanse of space, at the request of Carl Sagan Notes 2.